aaronx:I remember hearing that all the Iraqi soldiers kept 'melting away' (like the Wicked Witch of the West, I guess).

Turns out -- and this ended up being hilarious -- they had all just gone home with their weapons in order to be ready for the inevitable civil war. An inevitable civil war that our generals and our Secretary of Defense and our President (or even the guy in charge, our Vice President) didn't seem to have anticipated for even a second.

ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF Shinseki--a soldier who served two combat tours in Vietnam and lost half his foot to a landmine--told everyone it would require several hundred thousand troops to take and hold Iraq.

We sent 1.5 million military personnel into Iraq.

Our government knew EXACTLY what it was getting into and wanted the oil so bad, it was willing to throw away our soldiers lives and the lives of Iraqis.

A Dark Evil Omen:Oh, I'm pretty sure there's some people who learned some pretty solid lessons from Iraq, "the government will be led by the nose to go to war and sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others for the purpose of pouring trillions of dollars of taxpayer money directly into rich peoples' pants, and even the people against it won't put up more than a token fight."

Muta:I think a lot of people in the administration and Congress knew the most probable outcome. They were marginalized and

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we we're going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that Dick Cheney 1991

And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.... Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.Dick Cheney 1992

Because if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action and for the families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein was, how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right.

Once we got there, there was no going back. You carry it out, whether it takes 2 weeks or 20 years. Politics are out the window. You can't pull out because you'll look weak as a nation. Take it on the chin. Tough learned lesson.

I cannot possibly imagine any person with even just a passing familiarity with US history thinks we actually learned any lessons here whatsoever.

Oh, I'm pretty sure there's some people who learned some pretty solid lessons from Iraq, "the government will be led by the nose to go to war and sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others for the purpose of pouring trillions of dollars of taxpayer money directly into rich peoples' pants, and even the people against it won't put up more than a token fight."

Those people already knew from previous administrations/wars that we'll be led around by fear, warmongering for the purpose of political gain. It's not a far leap to oil/money.

This has nothing to do with politics. It goes back waaaay before Sept 11th. Sorry to say, but as a nation, we were pretty much begging to be attacked over the 80's and 90's.

Desert Storm. Supplying weapons to Taliban soldiers. Training them as a fighting force. Basically a big middle finger to the Middle East. It was an oil grab. But oil has nothing to do with it once we declared a war on terror.

NostroZ:A Dark Evil Omen: Oh, I'm pretty sure there's some people who learned some pretty solid lessons from Iraq, "the government will be led by the nose to go to war and sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others for the purpose of pouring trillions of dollars of taxpayer money directly into rich peoples' pants, and even the people against it won't put up more than a token fight."

Wrong.

The Iraq war was the MOST heavily protested war BEFORE it started. Not that it helped...

Democratic politicians that stood for it saw no political repercussions. There was no effort made to interfere with military recruiting efforts. There was a lot of noise and no meat behind it.

I didn't see anything about the type of support the Boers had outside the two provinces of that war.I'll give you this one.Philippine Insurrection. Malaya.

From Wiki:

Estimates of the Filipino forces vary between 100,000 to 1,000,000, with tens of thousands of auxiliaries. Lack of weapons and ammunition was a significant impediment to the Filipinos, so most of the forces were only armed with bolo knives, bows and arrows, spears and other primitive weapons that, in practice, proved vastly inferior to U.S. firepower.

The guerillas weren't well armed in the Philippines. Being well armed was one of my conditions.

GAT_00:netizencain: "Despite all the problems of the past decade, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis agree that we're better off today than under Hussein's brutal dictatorship.Iraqis will remain grateful for the U.S. role and for the losses sustained by military and civilian personnel that contributed in ending Hussein's rule. These losses pale by comparison, of course, to those sustained by the Iraqi people."

For truth.

I wonder what the couple hundred thousand dead or displaced persons say to being better off than before.

Muta:Mercutio74: In the sense that the most expensive military in the world can get bogged down in it's own rules of engagement simply by mounting an underground guerilla defense? That is kinda scary when you think about it.

I can't think of a time when a foreign invader that was able to defeat a well armed guerilla force that has support of the local populous. What happened to the US in Iraq was very predictable.

Oh you can definitely win in that scenario, of course it requires genocide, but hey it is possible. In order to win you just have to be willing to kill everyone.

So a baseball goes through a guy's window. He ignores the group of boys running away and instead knocks on his neighbor's door. He's had a strained relationship with his neighbor for years, and despite a lack of evidence, he knows his neighbor is behind the broken window. He demands that his neighbor hand over his son and all the sports equipment on the premises. The neighbor claims that he has neither a son nor sports equipment. The man proceeds to beat the neighbor to death and trashes his house in the process. He spends so much time over the next few years scouring the remains for the alleged son and sports equipment that he loses his job and his wife leaves him. Eventually he gives up his search and returns home for good. Then a street gang turns the blighted property next door into a meth lab.

SkeletorUpInHere:This has nothing to do with politics. It goes back waaaay before Sept 11th. Sorry to say, but as a nation, we were pretty much begging to be attacked over the 80's and 90's.

I never said it did. All I said was there's no way anyone with knowledge of history thinks we learned any lesson. The obvious implication I was making was everything that happened in Iraq/Afghanistan shouldn't have been a shock since it has all happened before. The original post was about guerrilla warfare. We should have learned that one in Vietnam, if not elsewhere. A follow-up reply was about leading the government around at the expense of lives for personal gain (money). We could have learned that one from Saint Reagan leading the government around, warmongering, at the expense of lives, for personal gain (political).

I don't think we learned a damn thing from the wars. I think this country is going to keep doing the same shiat over and over and over again throughout the rest of my lifetime.

A Dark Evil Omen:Mercutio74: A Dark Evil Omen: Yeah, well, there you are, aren't you? If politicians are immune to even the slightest of consequences it doesn't matter how big your rod puppets are, does it?

I think US politics would be so different if there was even just one extra viable party.

lennavan:I don't think we learned a damn thing from the wars. I think this country is going to keep doing the same shiat over and over and over again throughout the rest of my lifetime.

If you think the US can keep throwing trillions and trillions of dollars and thousands of lives (millions if you count the, y'know, victims) away for the next fifty years with no change or consequences you have a much more optimistic view than me.

Mercutio74:A Dark Evil Omen: Mercutio74: A Dark Evil Omen: Yeah, well, there you are, aren't you? If politicians are immune to even the slightest of consequences it doesn't matter how big your rod puppets are, does it?

I think US politics would be so different if there was even just one extra viable party.

Not mathematically possible.

Well, the grid locked status quo couldn't continue, that's for sure.

Sure, but it's not possible with the US electoral system structured as it is. The only hope for any change on that front is for one of the parties to collapse and make space for a new coalition to arise and form a new "top two" party. This is, ultimately, why I don't feel that there's much value in throwing a ton of energy into electoral politics.

A Dark Evil Omen:Sure, but it's not possible with the US electoral system structured as it is. The only hope for any change on that front is for one of the parties to collapse and make space for a new coalition to arise and form a new "top two" party. This is, ultimately, why I don't feel that there's much value in throwing a ton of energy into electoral politics.

Who knows, if the GOP continues thinking that the only problem they have is putting a prettier bow on their message, we might see it in less than a decade.

The only people who will believe this bullshiat story no questions asked are the same ones that have fallen for the propaganda the right wing noise machine has been pushing for the past 12 years. And I'm sorry, but there have been no right wingers that I can call anything other than propagandists or collaborators. Fox News and those who work for them being the most obvious.

We farked up Afghanistan by putting it all on the back burner and farking up capturing OBL when we possibly could have, all to take Iraq for it's sweet, sweet oil. Now, after all of this time, it's more closely aligned with Iran, and we have nothing to show for it other than thousands of war dead, and probably even more who are maimed, both in body & spirit. If that's 'winning', we need to stop it right away.

Dog Welder:Isn't it odd how everybody stopped keeping a death toll of Americans killed overseas after January 20, 2009?

If you've ever watched PBS Newshour, they periodically show in silence, at the end of the broadcast, the names and faces of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's really sad. I'm so glad they still are doing that, because no one else in broadcast media does.

A Dark Evil Omen:lennavan: I don't think we learned a damn thing from the wars. I think this country is going to keep doing the same shiat over and over and over again throughout the rest of my lifetime.

If you think the US can keep throwing trillions and trillions of dollars and thousands of lives (millions if you count the, y'know, victims) away for the next fifty years with no change or consequences you have a much more optimistic view than me.

Well, I never said there would be no consequences. But yes, I do think over the next 50 years we will keep throwing away trillions and trillions of dollars and millions of lives on the same pattern of unnecessary wars. I think that makes you the optimist.

Aidan:I had just moved to the US in 1999. So I had been here for about 2 years (slightly less), and was infuriated that all I heard on the news was how there was no money for good education.

Then BAM. War time. Money appeared like a farking geyser in the desert. Now there's still no money for education.

So don't feel too depressed. The US would have NEVER spent that money on something useful.

Yup. We suffer to pay those awful unionized teachers way too much to educate our children for their own futures, but HEY LOOK SOME DOUCHEBAG ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET SAID HE HATES AMERICA SO LET'S ROLL OVER HIS COUNTRY FOR FREEDOM. SPARE NO EXPENSE!! WE WILL PREVAIL!!!

NostroZ:Mercutio74: This war was never winnable in the sense that the US is stronger or safer coming out of it. And though it seems obvious in hindsight, actually displaying this to the world was a bad idea. Just as one example, do you think Iran fears the US army more or less than pre-Iraq occupation?

Not only that, but Iran now has a strong foothold in Iraq.

George Bush Senior knew that with Iraq you can conquer it within six days... occupying it is the quagmire.

Why don't we just bomb places and leave like we used to?

And Bush Sr. went in with a much bigger army than Bush Jr. did -- a quick check of Wikipedia shows that the 1991 coalition was nearly 1 million soldiers, while the 2003 invasion was done with 300K soldiers, only about half of whom stayed for the occupation.